Rise , though you rise against the heavens…

The root of the rot

You tasked me with understanding why, despite the vast incentives which we’ve established to refrain from such behavior, so many of the citizens of our Regime turn to sedition.

While I approached the task in a spirit of discovery, I’ve since come to realize that you must have known the answer long before setting me to this chore. It is an elementary conclusion for any semi serious investigation to uncover.

“Bread and Circuses” said the ancients, when discussing how a dictatorial government might keep its people quiescent. We are, to express it pithily, employing all bread, no circus. The people receive food from their Company Facility, but that is all that we give them.

In an ordinary nation they might reasonably expected to busy themselves with commerce, but She issues no laws. They might expend their energies in travel and industry, but She discourages travel, and the fruits of any creation will be seized by the Ultras. Humans dwelling within the bounds of the Regime have very little to do.

I’ve dispatched Knights and my own agents to observe our subjects, and the experimental evidence confirms my conjecture. The humans remain within their dwellings, or visit friends. They eat the paste. They procreate. Occasionally they attempt a longer term project which an Ultra inevitably confiscates.

Humans end up driven, by boredom if nothing else, to either aid an enemy faction (KEM, the rebellion, Union or Pantheon operatives) or to undergo the Process.

I’ll come by the Lair tomorrow and meet up with you to talk about what we can do about this.